What farking puzzles me is why was the local news talking about goddamn American Idol this morning while there's ice on the roads? Shut the fark, why are you 'reporting' on a TV show? If I cared I'd have watched it and therefore don't need a play by play from the motherfarking NEWS. Assholes.

Watched part of it while taking a study break. They kept saying that the dudes had to sit between them to keep the peace, but they seemed to be agreeing with each other and being nice to each other. Was there a fight at some point I didn't see?

CapeFearCadaver:What farking puzzles me is why was the local news talking about goddamn American Idol this morning while there's ice on the roads? Shut the fark, why are you 'reporting' on a TV show? If I cared I'd have watched it and therefore don't need a play by play from the motherfarking NEWS. Assholes.

Imma gonna guess that was on the same network that airs Idol? Farking programmiong being passed off as news.

I never heard of Manaj twit before and all I can think of is Peter Griffin when he's in 3rd grade class saying

bahamasorbust:The Sing Off was a great show but unfortunately it didn't have that great of a following and was canceled after its third season. I really wish NBC or someone else would bring it back.

I think there are only so many singing competition shows America can handle at one time. American Idol, half of America's Got Talent, The Voice, The X-Factor, The Sing-Off, The Singing Bee, Don't Forget The Lyrics, Duets, even Killer Karaoke... at some point it's just one massive amateur meat market from which only a rare few survive on the radio. It doesn't even matter whether you actually win; just that you survive long enough on your show to get fans and a record label to hear you enough to know you're worth following and signing.

There was a time when that word salad headline might have made sense to me despite the fact I've never watched an episode of the show. There was a time it was so pervasive that you couldn't help but be exposed to it unless you hid out in a cave somewhere.

But I have no idea what that headline means now and I have no idea what Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey - two people mentioned in the URL when I hover on the link - have to do with the show.

Sadly, it's been replaced with Honey Boo Boo. TV just keeps getting dumber and louder and more infuriating, it seems.

Mugato:I never got the appeal of the cat fight anyway. I want to see girls be nice to each other.

yeah... women can actually be pretty scary when they go into fight mode. it's like kittens or cats. all cute and nice and holy fark, i'd rather be in the room with bears and sharks then this little 5 lbs of ungodly terror.

Won't happen. They tend to be dirt cheap to produce, making them worth keeping around even if they take a ratings hit that would get a scripted show cancelled.

Yeah I know. Wishful thinking on my part. The best I can hope for is some sort of decline so that I can reach a point where I don't know who people like Honey Boo Boo or the people of Jersey Shore are despite never having seen an episode of either.

Benevolent Misanthrope:That's because no one gives half a shiat about Idol any more. Or any of the "talent contest" shows. It's done.

You mean that the public is becoming tired of shows where people with no connection to reality are treated like royalty and given the false illusion that they're the most important entertainer in the entire damn world, ever?

THX 1138:Benevolent Misanthrope: That's because no one gives half a shiat about Idol any more. Or any of the "talent contest" shows. It's done.

You mean that the public is becoming tired of shows where people with no connection to reality are treated like royalty and given the false illusion that they're the most important entertainer in the entire damn world, ever?

Gosling:Mugato: Benevolent Misanthrope: That's because no one gives half a shiat about Idol any more. Or any of the "talent contest" shows. It's done.

Thank Christ. Now if we could just get rid of reality shows.

Won't happen. They tend to be dirt cheap to produce, making them worth keeping around even if they take a ratings hit that would get a scripted show cancelled.

Remember when Argentina's economy collapsed around 2000? A side effect of the collapse was that the TV networks in Argentina couldn't afford to produce anything but reality shows anymore.

At the point, I would question just how cheap they really are. Specially a show like The Voice or Idol. Mariah, Minaj, Christina, et al are all getting multi million dollar paydays, production values are more expensive than for a sitcom.

THX 1138:You mean that the public is becoming tired of shows where people with no connection to reality are treated like royalty and given the false illusion that they're the most important entertainer in the entire damn world, ever?

Damn, maybe there is hope for humanity after all.

Well, there is a strain of that going around... but that's why the trainwreck auditions are on the outs these days. I think the shows are coming to realize that their credibility, after a while, depends on them actually producing talent. The most valuable prize they can offer is legitimate long-term stardom, but none of them can outright promise it because they don't know if any of their contestants will achieve it, and ultimately, that isn't up to them to decide. Awful auditions just waste time they could be spending trying to get a contender over with the crowd. American Idol has suffered in recent years because they haven't produced anyone lately. All they've been able to do in recent years is churn out one-hit wonders, with the one hit being the song provided to the winner. That's not enough. (And Carly Rae Jepsen came from a foreign, now-cancelled iteration of the show. So that doesn't help much.)

Meanwhile, The Voice is freely marching out contestants who are already in the industry up to and including being former co-workers of the judges themselves, and have pretty much no obvious cannon fodder whatsoever (at least none that gets on air), so their odds are going to be better.

Gosling:Awful auditions just waste time they could be spending trying to get a contender over with the crowd

But don't all the mouth breathers always say, "My favorite part is the beginning when the really bad contestants make fools of themselves! Where's my foam helmet?". I always heard that around the office.

Mugato:Gosling: Awful auditions just waste time they could be spending trying to get a contender over with the crowd

But don't all the mouth breathers always say, "My favorite part is the beginning when the really bad contestants make fools of themselves! Where's my foam helmet?". I always heard that around the office.

My wife is the reason I watch these type of shows and the only auditions she'll watch are for So You Think You Can Dance and The Voice. The other ones she's tried watching them but she'd rather study some IT stuff or sleep than waste her time on the auditions.

Mugato:Gosling: Awful auditions just waste time they could be spending trying to get a contender over with the crowd

But don't all the mouth breathers always say, "My favorite part is the beginning when the really bad contestants make fools of themselves! Where's my foam helmet?". I always heard that around the office.

My wife and daughter are pretty much addicted to American Idol so I watch it also. My favorite seasons had Steven Tyler in them, they were actually fun to watch just to see what he would do. This season has started off so dull I find myself missing Simon Cowell, there have been a couple of contestants that were so bad I would have loved to hear Simon comment on them.

If by "death knell" you mean consistently cruising along at the exact same ratings it got last yearthen, yeah, I guess the end is nigh.

I don't get the constant crowing about the "death" of American Idol. Sure, it's down from its peak, but it's still going to be the one of top non-NFL shows this year. The Walking Dead might come close and The Big Bang Theory will probably beat it a couple of times, but given that American Idol airs something like 40 hours per season while The Walking Dead airs 16 and Big Bang airs about 12, American Idol is going to generate far and away the most revenue of any show on television not named Sunday Night Football.

Maybe it's my age showing, but I don't understand the appeal of Nicki Manaj.Generic sound, forgettable look and her stage name sounds like something involving three consenting adults and a disposable razor.

Mugato:Beats me. I tune them out as best I can. I just hear them crow about laughing at the losers (who as far as I can tell from what I've seen in the ads, have to be plants).

Not plants, but engineered to fail nonetheless. There have been stories of auditioners being outright assigned a song- often one song is picked for a particular audition city and a bunch of auditioners are pretty much ordered to sing it even if they don't know it- and hey, look at all the idiots who can't sing that song they don't know instead of the song they wanted to sing but we won't tell the viewers that.

And then there are the preliminary rounds- the big stadium shots- before the judges come into play. There are all sorts of stories of legitimate contenders being sent home by some producer lackey inside of 20 seconds while someone who clearly thought they were applying for Let's Make a Deal instead gets sent through in their place. So now they get advanced through several preliminary rounds and watching good singers get eliminated instead of them, their confidence gets built up, at this point they've been given reason to believe they're actually good, with the producers knowing full well that they're building them up to get slapped down in the judges' round, at which point... hey, who are you to tell me I suck all of a sudden? Everybody says I'm great!

And that's not even counting the radio contests offering "a guaranteed chance to sing in front of the judges", meaning who the hell knows what the judges are getting. Probably not someone going to Hollywood.

lc6529:My wife and daughter are pretty much addicted to American Idol so I watch it also. My favorite seasons had Steven Tyler in them, they were actually fun to watch just to see what he would do. This season has started off so dull I find myself missing Simon Cowell, there have been a couple of contestants that were so bad I would have loved to hear Simon comment on them.

I wonder what he would have said about the girl who sang terrible and was majoring in musical theater.

doctorguilty:Maybe it's my age showing, but I don't understand the appeal of Nicki Manaj.Generic sound, forgettable look and her stage name sounds like something involving three consenting adults and a disposable razor.

Her acting career went bust after her brief stint as the female Gremlin in Gremlin's 2.